Arab States in Crisis

Marina Ottaway, Director of the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Monday 25 October 2010

Marina Ottaway works on issues of political transformation in the Middle East and of Gulf security. A long-time analyst of the formation and transformation of political systems, she has also written on political reconstruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, and African countries. Before joining the Endowment, Ottaway carried out research in Africa and in the Middle East for many years and taught at the University of Addis Ababa, the University of Zambia, the American University in Cairo, and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

In this seminar Ottaway explored the deficit of democracy in the Arab world and the major problems that threaten the effectiveness and in some cases the survival of many Arab states. She discussed a number of failed - or failing - Arab states, others with only limited sovereignty due to power-sharing with non-state actors, and a number of states whose administrative systems have not kept up with their growing economies and rapidly changing societies.